Commentary on popular culture and society, from a (mostly) psychological perspective

Monday, January 16, 2006

It's About Time

Congress finally acknowleges that family violence strikes men too. What a novel idea.

Last month, in a little-noticed end-of-the-year action, Congress reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act. The final version includes text that, for the first time, recognizes male victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. This is a step in the right direction of a balanced approach to family violence—but only the first step.

40 Comments:

when I was growing up, many people brought their teen agers to the local bar on a Sunday afternoon. (I think this method of education about alcohol would still work today, and it is also very educational about alcohol's effects.)

One Sunday I was playing shuffleboard and overheard a guy thing discussion of who was boss in the family.

One truck driver type, (6'6", 250 pounds,) expounded "I keep my wife barefoot and pregnant." Almost immediately there was a tap on his shoulder. He turned, looked down and mumbled, "Oh, hello dear!" His wife had come into the bar just seconds before.

His wife, (under 5' and 100 pounds,) stretched up and using her thumb and finger, took him by the earlobe and marched him out of the bar, (leaving his money, cigarettes, lighter etc.)

Interesting to see this the day after Colts cornerback Nick Harper played in the game against the Steelers while his wife sat in jail on serious charges stemming from an incident Saturday in which she stabbed him in his knee (I blogged about this earlier this morning).

Daniell Harper, predictably, claims it was an accident, and of course we don't know all the facts yet. Harper himself has a domestic battery case pending against him.

Dr. Helen, you do us all a service when you refer to whole area as "family" rather than "domestic" violence. The latter seems a label too easy to hide behind (and its too associated with women-as-victims only), while the former better captures the reality and the tragedy of this sort of situation. It also implies the presence of others who belong in the equation, as bystanders--that is, any children in the situation.

Family violence is usually a two-way street. Just because a man is as big as a football player, doesn't mean that he might not be meek as a lamb when a five foot two woman comes by. Interpersonal violence is often psychological and depends not necessarily on who has the most physical strength but rather, who has the most willingness to use violence to solve an interpersonal problem--the complexity of human emotion knows no gender boundaries.

I'm not saying I don't believe you when you say it's a problem. I'm just curious as to its reported prevalence. Obviously, as with all statistics of this nature, the problem of incidents that are not reported skews the data.

robosquirrel makes a good point. Watch TV shows and see how many times it's supposed to be funny when a woman hits or slaps a man. I remember on an episode of the old "What Do You Say To a Naked Lady" show an elderly couple were the dupes and the woman must have slapped the man on the shoulder and back 50 times or more. I really wondered how "funny" this would have been if the roles were switched.

Unfortunately, I have nothing more than anecdotal evidence to add to the discussion…

In my youth a young woman, for reasons never fully explained, unloaded a kick in my groin at the local pool. Later she muttered something about just wanting to see what would happen.

Another charming young lady slapped my face and drove my head into a door jam. (She had been provoked—in spite of our familiarity with one another, I had transgressed established boundaries with a salacious remark. Still, a stern rebuke would have been more appropriate).

Later in life I spent time with a woman who had a bit of a reputation for having a bad temper. She was a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet, standing five-foot-three-inches tall. There was nothing but dynamite packed into that frame, and if someone lit that short fuse—look-out. She backed big men down with shear ferocity.

Another New England beauty—tall, lean and wonderful—recounts a story of an altercation with a demure smile. She had a close call on the road with a gentleman driving a Corvette. After a near collision both she and this man pulled over, each angry at the other. She climbed out of her vehicle, ran to the driver’s side of his car and began kicking the door, cursing like a modern sailor only wishes he could curse. The Corvette driving gentleman left abruptly without further engaging the beauty.

One charming conversation with a modern woman ended abruptly when she declared men were the source of all relational discord. I left, shaking my head at the shear idiocy of her declaration.

There are so many more tales to tell… Still, I’m only a male, and women are quite clearly superior in nature to my brutish, unthinking masculinity. Feh.

I apologize if my 1:13 PM post veers a bit off topic—my frustration got the better of me I’m afraid.

As you indicated earlier in the thread, there’s ample evidence of female to male aggression, rendering my anecdotes unnecessary. The point I had hoped to express was simply an affirmation of the declaration you made in this thread: “it’s about time”. It is about time.

Does anyone have any statistics on the proportion of men needing medical attention (bleeding, broken bones etc) after being attacked by female significant others vs women needing medical attention after being attacked by male significant others?

Anjali makes a great point. I bet stats about how many men who report being injured in a domestic violence initiated by his female partner are going to be really under-reported. What man wouldnt be totally ashamed to admit that he was the victim, and admit that he got beat-up by a woman? After reading these comments, I called my friend who is a local cop, and he said that in his 10 yrs experience,- that men readily admit to having been beaten up when the couple is a gay couple. However, men in a heterosexual couple that gets beaten up, is much less likely to admit to having gotten beaten up by a woman. Even if it is obvious to the cops on scene that it was the guy who got the worse end of the fight.

" [...] Feminist created “domestic violence” laws serve as another way to give women an upper hand over men while keeping them dependent on men and the government. Domestic violence laws are not necessary, since there are already well-established laws in place preventing assault and battery. But feminists wanted to give women an advantage in the home over their husbands and boyfriends by teaching them to involve the government in order to win verbal arguments. Domestic violence laws now include “glaring looks” and “financial violence,” whatever that means. Somewhere less than twenty percent of all domestic violence calls even involve an allegation of assault. Domestic violence laws give women an edge over men because men are five to nine times less likely to call the police over a dispute than women are. Police reports and restraining orders play a large role in deciding child custody issues, so the more a woman calls the police, the better chances she has at obtaining custody of any mutual children along with “free” child support.[...] "

By Rachel Alexander August 3 2003, you can read the rest at

http://www.intellectualconservative.com/article2535.html

Rachel Alexander is a former Assistant Attorney General for the State of Arizona.

A couple of years ago, in Men's Health magazine, they published numbers on "domestic" violence in the USA, and guess what? In more than half the cases, women did admit to the police they were the first to hit the other, and in many cases women also did admit they did it with an object like a cell phone or a shoe, and in the face!

I've never had someone - man or woman - hit me in the face with a hard object like a shoe, but I'd say it must be difficult to not hit back, very difficult...

And in most cases, even when it was the man that called the police complaining his wife was being violent, they still took the man back to the police station!!!

I don't know if those numbers are available on the net, I think I kept that magazine in a box somewhere...I'll try to find it.

"Interpersonal violence is often psychological," says Dr. Helen. And she's right. As a result, I think no DV stat is accurate enough to put family violence into proportion.

Jephnol, I'm terribly sorry to hear about your experience at the pool. One of my major pet peeves is the lack of honor attributed the male anatomy.

Men have a right, and as humans a natural need, to feel pleased with and grateful for their bodes. But unfortunately, our weaknesses are so often exploited that it makes it hard to feel comfortable in our own skin, so to speak (which I'm sure is why some men will go as far as to call this kind of assault an equivalent to rape).

I think, after reading the comments here, that first some cultural work needs to be done. Men need to be given the message "It's okay to tell people when you've been a victim of violence perpetrated by a woman." I have no idea how to get that out in mainstream US culture. Good luck.Until that message is accepted, however, doing something about women's violence against their husbands is a non-starter.

I've long thought that the best indicator for family violence is the 2:1 ratio based on need for medical care. That is two female victims for every one male victim. That ratio has the best science to back it up. Most everyone who bothers to look at the data agrees.

Mind you, that is only one small part of the family violence problem.

This article shows part of the problem:

http://www.asahi.com/english/Herald-asahi/TKY200601140135.html

A man who behaves this way is openly seen as an abuser: A woman? She is seen as just the wife the man chooses to be married to. DUMB! The gap in social viewpoint is huge and dangerous to all of us.

I see more and ever more men who deeply believe that the only way to have a marriage is to expect abuse. The women is always right: Period. Well ... that creates a large problem. These marriages are not marriages: They are parent-child relationships based on abuse.

In Japan where the Devil Wife problem is largest, the number of men willing to marry at all has fallen into the mid sixty percent range: It should be in the high eighty percent range. More and ever more Japanese men are simply refusing to marry: The reason is, as they say it "there's to much hassle." Read that as too much abuse and you're reading right.

We here in NA should reasonably expect a permanent bachelor rate of about 12%. We're running 22% and rising fast. Why? One of the reasons is the way we demand family violence be viewed.

" I've long thought that the best indicator for family violence is the 2:1 ratio based on need for medical care. That is two female victims for every one male victim. That ratio has the best science to back it up. "

Sorry but that does not tell you who is abusing who or who started the fight, it only tells you who won the fight or who is stronger, just like when a human gets bitten by a dog, the fact that the human is the one bleeding and the dog is not, does not tell you what happened.

The fact that the human requires stitches does not prove the human was the victim or that the dog is vicious.

You can not see the days or weeks of teasing and taunting the dog went through before it got to this point, you can only see the bite on the human's hand.

A few punches from a 5'2" and 105 pound woman can not leave much of a mark on a man, but the damage on a woman's face from one single punch from a 6'2" 250 pound man will make a nice front page photo for your local news paper...but it does not tell the story - at all.

I could have gone with the car analogy; in a two car accident, does the fact that the compact car has suffered much more damage than the big SUV proves the SUV's driver is the one who ran the red light?

Here's a question -- how can I help a male friend who is definitely a victim? His girlfriend is totally psycho and beats up on him about once a month, he's had multiple black eyes and broken teeth when she kicked him. He was abused by his mother as a child, this is probably why he stays in this relationship and doesn't fight back ever. He's not a big guy, but she's 5'0 and about 100 pounds, and he could overpower her but he won't. So, what are his friends to do? No one says anything to him about it, but I think by just watching it happen we're enabling it. If the roles were reversed, someone would have said something by now. Is there any kind of men's support group I could refer him to? He definitely would not call the police, and the abuse never happens when any of us are around. Basically we're all hoping his gf will get bored and leave, but I she's been around for about 2 years so I'm afraid its not going to happen -- she probably won't be able to find another guy who will take her abuse very easily. Its really sickening.

I don't know the legal statutes in your state regarding domestic abuse. However, I suggest that you talk with your friend and help him to get to a therapist who should be able to point him in the right direction. Make sure he finds a therapist who deals with men's issues or is familiar with battered males.

anonymous 256: The "who started the fight" concept has for years been used to say men are not hurt by women. A women stabs her husband? The response is who started the fight. The woman started the fight is responded with "why did she start the fight." Which is responded to with more questions none of which have anything to do with the question at hand. ad nauseum.

For what it's worth; remember when that woman cut off her husband's penis? Bobbit I believe was his name?Many women journalist were celebrating that act, it was presented in many magazines as a victory for women...

Can you imagine men journalist celebrating the fact that a man cut off his wive's breasts?No one would publish that - ever.

A couple of years ago some feminists were claiming that on Super Bowl day, violence against women increased a lot.They backed their claims with a study.

Some tv stations - including ABC - even offered free air time to some women group, so they could inform people of that dangerous day...

It turned out the whole thing was bogus, even the study was bogus.

Feminists in general are very unfair.

Feminists have replaced a tyranny with another.

They should change their name for Hatemenist which is what they really are.